


Second Chances

by cgf_kat



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Future Fic, Near Future, plance, plangst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-29 20:39:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15736929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cgf_kat/pseuds/cgf_kat
Summary: Pidge is trying make her throat work. How many times has she wanted a chance like this? What if Lance is out there?Before she can make herself speak, a strangled voice joins the quieting chorus on the open channel. “Katie? Katie, are any of those you?”***When several Voltrons from parallel realities meet in the final battle against the rift creatures, the Pidge from our reality who lost her Lance has a chance to speak with another Lance who lost her.





	Second Chances

**Author's Note:**

> From a Plangst prompt on tumblr. Thank you so much for reading! I'd love to hear what you think! :)

Lance was supposed to die a hero’s death - or old and at her side, preferably. 

He got neither. He got a drunk driver losing control on a road still damaged from the Galra occupation and an impact that killed him instantly. 

Only Allura’s alchemy might have had a chance at saving him, but she was offworld. She blames herself for not being there, and in two years Pidge has lost track of how many times she’s had to tell the princess she isn’t to blame. 

At least Earth is the center of the coalition now. At least she isn’t alone. She has her parents and her friends, and it made it a little easier those first few months to look into her daughter’s blue eyes every day and remember Lance...until the pain became warmth. 

There are still days when she would do anything just to hear his voice again, or see his smile - for real, not in pictures and recordings. To talk to him and have him answer. She never expects to get the chance. Not really. But when they finally face the rift creatures, Voltron isn’t alone. 

There must be a dozen of them or more. Voltrons and other similar defenders, in the quintessence field with them. Versions from other realities. Some piloted by entirely different pilots, some with versions of them...there’s no time to keep track of it all. It takes all of them. There’s only time to breathe after the creatures are gone.

“What now?” another version of Hunk asks over the radio. “Between all of us we opened...a lot of rifts. That can’t be good.”

“We were ready for this,” Allura says from Pidge’s Voltron. “In our reality another encounter created the same problem. We have a device with us that will create the short burst of infinite mass needed to close the rifts across all realities. As soon is everyone is safely in their own we will detonate it in ours.”

They’re probably going to lose time again. Last time it was three years. How long will it be this time? How much of her daughter’s life is she going to miss? At least this time everyone back home knows it might happen.

Allura is explaining that part to the others now. That they should be prepared. When she’s finished a new voice cuts into the radio waves.

“Allura…?”

A small gasp. “Father?”

Stunned silence. A gentle reminder from Keith. “We only have about fifteen doboshes before the rifts grow too large. Then we’ll all need to get out of here.”  
A chorus of “understoods’ and other affirmatives. More voices, some new and some familiar, paladins calling out to each other and dropping off the public channel in pairs to speak privately while they can. 

Pidge is trying make her throat work. How many times has she wanted a chance like this? What if Lance is out there?

Before she can make herself speak, a strangled voice joins the quieting chorus on the open channel. “Katie? Katie, are any of those you?”

She punches up a private connection with the broadcaster before she can think. “Lance?” The face solidifies on a pop-up screen, and his eyebrows go up over damp eyes. “Lance!”

“Katie…” He’s crying. Why? Why do they seem to have had such bad luck in more than one reality? How is that fair?

Pidge swallows. She doesn’t have to ask. “I lost you too,” she whispers. 

“I love you,” he says. “I...I just needed to say that again. I’m sorry. I know you’re not her, but I—”

“I love you, too.”

“I wish we had more time.” He smiles. “I wish you could come with me.”

She laughs weakly. “Me too...but I have to make it home. We...I have a daughter…”

Lance blinks, and it’s exactly the face she remembers. It’s so hard to keep straight that this isn’t her Lance. “Sh-she’s all right?” he asks.

“What...?”

“I had - I-I lost both of you.”

Pidge’s chest clenches. “I’m so sorry, Lance.”

Silence. There’s not much time left. But what else is there to say?

“Three doboshes, everyone,” Keith is saying.

Maybe it’s the quintessence, maybe she’ll realize it’s crazy later, but—

“Come with ME,” Pidge says, urgency and desperation creeping into her voice. 

“What?” Lance asks. “You want me to?”

“Yes!”

For a moment he just stares. And if looking at his face for another moment or so and the memory of hearing him tell her he loves her again are all she gets from this, it’s more than she ever thought she would have before. 

But then he says ‘hang on’ and opens the channel to the rest of his team. 

The next dobosh or two are a blur. Lance determining that his team can make it back without him. Looping in the rest of Pidge’s team. The half-hearted protests of ‘we love you guys but is this really a good idea’ that only last seconds before both sides realize they’re not changing anyone’s mind. Goodbyes. 

But it isn’t safe for anyone to be exposed to the quintessence field without a lion and and there’s no time left for their respective Voltrons to move closer. Two flashes of light later, though, and Keith’s wolf has brought Lance to her and gone back to Keith again, and Keith is shouting that they need to get out of here. There’s no time to do much more than glance back as they fire thrusters. Arms wrap around the back of her seat as her passenger steadies himself in the shaking cockpit. 

No time, either, when they’re out of the quintessence field. Allura deploys the device and their job then is to get as far away as possible before it goes off. 

So many memories. Running away from the explosion the castle created the first time they did this. Her things from her room strewn across her cockpit. The trash creation that was supposed to look like Lance on the floor at her feet. This time Lance is here. With her. His helmet clacking against the back of hers as the force of the explosion pushes the lions across space. 

Floating in silence. The lions resting from the battle as the explosion dies away. The quiet of space and the exhaustion after victory. 

Pidge can feel the exhaustion in her bones, but it doesn’t slow her down in ripping her helmet off as she jumps up from her seat to reach out for Lance. His helmet is already off too as he pulls her in to kiss her. There are tears on her cheeks and only some of them are her own. 

He sobs. “I never thought…”

“We’re probably crazy.”

“I don’t care,” he laughs.

She can’t let go of him, but as the high of the quintessence field wears off the fears crash in. “But y-you can’t go back now. What have we done? We’ve had different lives! Did we think this would be EASY? We can’t just—”

Lance silences her with another kiss, his fingers running through her hair just the way her Lance always did it. Maybe...maybe this isn’t so crazy after all.

“We’ll figure it out,” he whispers. “We’ll make our own life.”

A voice over the radio, then, cutting into their thoughts. “Voltron, this is Atlas. Can you hear us?”

“We hear you, Shiro. We’re all right,” Allura is saying. “Were we correct in assuming time would bend around the explosion again?”

“It’s been about sixteen phoebs out here. Welcome back, Paladins,” comes the relieved answer.

“Not quite a year and half,” Lance is saying. “How old…?”

Pidge knows what he’s asking before he can articulate the rest of it. “She’s...she’ll have just turned four, I think.” It comes out quietly. Sixteen months. Not as bad as last time. They must have managed to get farther away before the blast, perhaps. It not as bad as it could have been. But it’s still time missed. 

She swallows. “She won’t know you...she was only six months old when you...when her father died.”

Warm, gentle fingers brush away the fresh tears on her cheeks. “That’s okay...we’ll get to know each other. Our own life now, remember?”

Pidge kisses him again, and they melt into each other.

She doesn’t wonder, for long, if her Lance and his Pidge would have wanted this. As she holds onto him she knows they would have because she knows she would, if their places were reversed.

“But we won’t forget them,” Lance whispers a moment later. As if he were reading her thoughts.

“Never.”


End file.
